


we bend and we break

by soldierwitch



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Domestic Violence, F/M, POV Peeta Mellark, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3773818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierwitch/pseuds/soldierwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a poem that my father loved to recite. In those hours, I could only remember one line. We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men. I never understood. One cannot be both hollow and stuffed. I had believed it to be a contradiction but it is not. It is a paradox and I have been made an example of this truth. I have been hollowed out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we bend and we break

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this some time in 2012 when I was still in a very dark place with my post!mj PK feels. I've never felt that Collins did enough to explore and work through PK's PTSD and Peeta's hijacking, so this fic was my way of sorting through how I felt these two would be in the future had they continued down the path they were on without communicating with one another. For me, PK's biggest problem in the books is a lack of communication and this fic is all about keeping everything bottled up to the point that you periodically lash out. It's about two people ending up with each other and not knowing what to do with one another, but needing each other too much to let the relationship go. The fic is dark so please heed the suicidal thoughts, PTSD, and domestic violence trigger warnings.

Nights trapped behind the cold walls of District 13 were spent shaking and sweating. The sound of the toilet flushing down purges became familiar to guards who had long ago stopped rushing in whenever they heard me scream. I remember vividly the twitching of my hands as I struggled to grasp the steel bowl and empty myself. But shadows find ways to fit themselves into the grooves of ribs; they don’t settle into the lining of stomachs. I could purge for hours but the darkness that clings to every bone in my body stayed put, never moving. 

There was a poem that my father loved to recite. In those hours, I could only remember one line. _We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men._ I never understood. One cannot be both hollow and stuffed. I had believed it to be a contradiction but it is not. It is a paradox and I have been made an example of this truth. I have been hollowed out. I am a fleshed skeleton who breathes through the use of organs that have been so filled with toxins that I can no longer differentiate between what is real and what is not. And I have been stuffed full with colored memories of events that have happened, may have happened, could have happened, possibly happened, and did not happen at all. There were three things that I was sure of back then: My name is Peeta Mellark. I was born and raised in District 12. Katniss Everdeen is important. 

It has been 19 years since I was that boy who pressed his back to the damp wall and looked longingly at the mirror; fingers itching to break the glass and cut deep into a vein. I would have gladly accepted the comfort of death but the whisper of there being someone who needed me kept my fingers imbedded in my palms. Katniss. My thoughts were always of Katniss. Bitter, angry, and confusing. She was burned into every memory, real or fake. Her presence hung behind my eyelids. I hated her. If I’m honest…I still hate her.

I cannot shake Katniss. She is everything in me; the center of the mess that they made me into. There are parts of me that reject her. Parts that want to choke her and watch the life slowly slip from her pale grey eyes. I cannot say whether they are bigger or smaller than the parts that remember loving her. What I can say is that they do not hold a candle to the parts that need her. I need Katniss in the way my bones need marrow. She is my entire make up and I hate her because I can feel the rooms of myself that were my own but I can never get them back. The Capitol ripped out everything that made me who I am, picked out all the pieces they wanted, and then stuffed them back in. Most of the pieces they chose belonged to Katniss. 

Delly tried to help me regain some of myself. She told me stories, named as many facts about me that she could, spent some nights holding my hand. And I tried my best to show her that I was grateful. I told her about my nightmares, and she was the only person that I allowed to touch me for extend periods of time. But she, like everyone else, also pushed me towards Katniss. She would speak of the way my lips would turn up whenever I heard someone call Katniss’ name. Of how I used to rush to the south gate of our school just so Katniss’ eyes could catch mine for a few seconds. Delly said that she was there on one of the days that I hadn’t made it. “She waited. Only for a minute but she waited, Peeta.” I made Delly leave early that day for saying that.

Katniss waited. Katniss is waiting. Katniss waits. It’s all anyone seemed to care about. How Katniss waited for me. How she had been waiting for me. How she would sit outside my door for hours just waiting. But no one understood how I had waited too. I waited for the day that I would leave the hell that was my prison. I waited in the dark trying hopelessly to shuffle through memories that I could barely understand because I was so drugged. I waited to wrap my hands around her throat and watch as her fingers scrambled for purchase. I waited so long that the love I had for her got lost somewhere in the jumble that my mind had become.

I still have not gotten that love back. I can feel the space in my heart where it used to live but it’s no longer there. In its place is need. So much need that the thought of leaving Katniss hurts with a pain that feels like it could cripple me. I’m not sure if it was always like this or if the love I felt balanced it out in some way. All I know is that at one point I loved her and I needed her and then all of it got messed up and all I have left is the need.

I need her back to face away from me at night so I can memorize the dip of her spine and count the freckles that dot her olive skin. I need for her to unravel herself from the ball that she shrinks into at night and wrap her limbs around me like vines by the time the sun’s rays begin to peek through our blinds. Those moments between sleep and wake are magic. They are the only magic we have left. And I need them. I need her fingers grasping at my shirt in the morning. I need to gaze into her eyes and know what kind of day it’s going to be by whether or not they are rimmed with red. I don’t want to need her so much but I do and it eats away at me.

A person shouldn’t need someone as much as I need Katniss. And for years I thought that if I had somewhere else to put some of that need, if I had someone else to hold and touch and care for that it would all start to fade. So I asked Katniss for a child. I knew that it would send her into fits. I knew that her nightmares would get worse and that she’d wake up screaming for children she didn’t have. I knew that she would hate me for it. That she would yell and shout and seethe but I couldn’t care enough to stop my mouth from forming the words. I needed to need something other than her so I kept asking and asking and asking until her no changed into a yes.

But our daughter didn’t change anything. She didn’t make me love Katniss the way that I used to or the way that I should. Or stop my nightmares. Or make me stop needing her mother in this unhealthy way that makes me feel like my bones are on fire. All she did was fuse us together and press the label of family on us. I felt trapped and by the time we had our son I felt stuck. I still feel that way and I know Katniss does, too. It’s in the way I’ll sometimes wake to a cold bed and find her bent over the countertop with a tumbler full of liquor in her hand; a half empty bottle sitting next to her. It’s in the way she clutches the edges of tables whenever she glances herself in a reflective surface. And in the way she’ll stare at our mailbox while an envelope gets strangled by her hands.

We don’t function on wants anymore; we function on needs. Katniss needs the smell of bread to fill the house in the morning. She needs to wake the kids and catalogue any perceivable difference in their appearances and attitudes. She needs the stability of our day to day routine. It helps her keep track of changes or deviations or little minute detours from how life is now. And we need to hide who we really are from our kids. They know the basics. They know that their mommy and daddy are war heroes and that terrible things happened in the past. As they grow they’ll learn more and more but Katniss and I will do our best to tamper things down. Our children don’t need to know that their parents are broken and fragile. 

They don’t need to know that the red mark on the side of their mother’s neck was made by me grabbing her by her shirt and forcing her up against a wall during an episode. They don’t need to know that the half moon bruises on my forearms were her parting gift during a particularly bad argument that set me off. Or that some days we sit at the table and stare at one another, trying fruitlessly to find whatever it was between us before. Whatever it was that didn’t rip, claw, and tear its way through us. We were happy once. Not completely and not without the looming cloud of the Capitol upon us. But we had moments. I know because my fingers find ways to etch them into canvases. Sunsets, balconies, trains, rooftops, snow storms, woods, and a place that I can’t quite make out. Too fuzzy except for the feeling and the press of Katniss’ hand in mine.

I used to ask Katniss “real or not real." I stopped asking when she stopped answering, choosing instead to fit herself into my side and letting a sigh escape her mouth. One hand stroking at the nape of my neck, fingers playing with the hair there. The other hand threading its fingers with mine. When she does that I almost feel like everything is going to be okay. That is what I crave most when it comes to Katniss. Not her love, not her care. I crave the feeling of safety when I’m in her arms and the knowledge that she needs me like I need her. Two broken people cannot make a whole. It’s impossible. But we can fit our pieces together and pretend like it makes a difference. And sometimes that is almost enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
